Remote Vision Through a Virtual Reality Headset (Video)

Add some material-handling devices and you'd have software-controlled Waldos, first described by Robert A. Heinlein in the 1942 short story titled Waldo. So while the idea of a pair of artificial eyes you control by moving your head (while looking at the area around the artificial eyes, even if it's in orbit), sounds like futuristic fun, especially if you use an Oculus Virtual Reality device instead of an LED screen, it not only hasn't caught up with science fiction, but is a fair ways behind science fact. Still, the idea of being able to control a vision system deep under the sea or in orbit around Saturn is certainly interesting in and of itself. (Alternate Video Link)

Comments

Quad copter...

[MindPrison]

...this is pretty cool, but I'd rather prefer to control a QuadCopter with the Oculus rift!

Oh wait (searches)...it's done already:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Hm, wonder if I can play GTA 5 etc... with the oculus rift (googles again before pressing preview)
http://www.nerdist.com/2014/06...

Hm...not quite conclusive, but we're getting there...

Latency

[Anonymous Coward]

On Saturn, really?
That will have a latency of 2,5 hours already.

Seems like a bad way to do it

[popo]

Wouldn't it be easier to have a video stream which contains the full sphere of video data at all times, and use the client-headset position to display a subset of that data?

That would allow infinite numbers of people to share the same virtual experience rather than create a silly 1-to-1 mechanized connection.

yeah, doing that.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's conventions across the country I wanted to visit but couldn't, so I started working on a telepresence bot. Connects to the internet with wifi, has two cameras on its head, and is designed to have servos with head tracking so it can look around. With a decent battery and some friends in attendance you can make it truly mobile, have someone bring "you" to panels and stuff. Add microphone+speakers and make it adorable and it's an instant win.

(The head tracking works even through lag by reading from cameras and painting the output onto the inside of a sphere with the viewer at the origin; the viewer also looks from inside the sphere, but isn't tied to the actual camera angle. The bot head chases the direction you're looking in, but even if it's slow, the picture doesn't jerk around too bad...you just have black regions where it's not actually pointed at the moment.)

The algorithms are solid, but servos are not easy to do right when you don't have a good mechanical background, and the first gen Rift isn't the greatest piece of hardware so it's still a work in progress, but...yeah it's a thing.

Re:yeah, doing that.

[FatLittleMonkey]

so I started working on a telepresence bot.

Pics?

[If you mean Comicon-like conventions, have you "cosplayed" the casing as a SF/comic/video-game robot?]

painting the output onto the inside of a sphere with the viewer at the origin; the viewer also looks from inside the sphere, but isn't tied to the actual camera angle.

That is not just clever, but the more superior "obvious in hindsight" clever.

There's just one problem

[ArcadeMan]

Add some material-handling devices and you'd have software-controlled Waldos.

The problem happens when you lose one of them.